Thermal modeling of PCB
Thermal modeling of PCB
(OP)
Any guidance on resources describing modeling of PCB's for thermal analysis. Approaching thermal FEA analysis of electronics products.
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RE: Thermal modeling of PCB
Did you mean CFD analysis? Because you won't get very far with an FEA analysis, unless you are depending on conduction to remove the vast majority of your heat - FEA packages are not capable of calculating the heat transfer coefficients from natural or forced convection, and these can change drastically depending on your cooling scheme.
RE: Thermal modeling of PCB
RE: Thermal modeling of PCB
But remember, the heat has to go somewhere! So at some point the exterior of your box or package will have to remove the heat, and you may have convection/radiation there.
Sorry that I couldn't be more specific.
RE: Thermal modeling of PCB
In that course I wrote an FEA program to do exactly what you're asking for in Basic. It was a very cheesy program as you may imagine a senior in college doing it, but it worked. You may consider writing your own if you feel comfortable with that. It doesn't need to have a high tech look to be effective.
To answer your question, I would guess that the vast majority of the heat transfer is conduction through the heat sink. Here I'm assuming the system you have is similar to those I studied for aerospace applications as described above. I'd suggest ignoring convection and radiation heat transfer effects as they are likely to be low and if they are not specifically designed into the package, I'd suggest these effects are not controllable and reliable.
Have you done a web search for software packages?
Sorry I can't be more helpful.